Mistakes Here or There
Over the past two weeks, I have been confronted
with documentary proof that I make mistakes. This Short
Take covers some of them. I offered to resign over
this, but the president of my company refused to accept it,
saying I was doing "a superb job."
Agile
In last week's piece on Agile, bad wording (and a few neuronal failures)
gave several readers quite the wrong impression about a couple of things:
- Chris Wong is not singlehandedly responsible for everything good at Agile. Jay Fulcher, the COO and President,
also comes from PeopleSoft and is also bringing his extensive big-company
experience and Rolodex to the various problems at Agile. If things improve
at Agile, both Jay and Chris should take a lot of credit. Jay has been responsible
for improving things on the operational side (where he's had a lot of experience);
Chris is responsible for product strategy. Bryan Stolle, by the way, is now CEO, not
President.
- Eigner is not just a "viewer." It provides a way of capturing and storing
material that originates in many different authoring tools, not just CAD tools.
In my own mind, I was using "viewer" as shorthand for this function, but people
who know more than I do tell me this is entirely and thoroughly incorrect. There
are many different kinds of authoring tools, so I can see their point.
- Finally, some people thought this was a negative piece on Agile.
Not at all. Clearly, Agile is now in a position where a lot of good
things can happen.
I hope this helps correct any false impressions.
One correspondent, whose knowledge of Eigner predates any Agile
contact, thinks I made a mistake by underselling both the product and the company.
Not only is my characterization of their viewer incorrect, says this person,
but I also understate the company's great strengths in process management.
"It's a very well-engineered, but flexible product that goes in much more
quickly than competitors like Matrix One or PTC. If I were either of those
companies, I'd be terrified." This correspondent knows more about Eigner
than I do, and he generally has opinions that are worth listening to.
Tom Siebel
The e-mail around Tom Siebel was voluminous.
Several people didn't think the resignation required much explanation. "If I had a
few billion dollars to spend, I'd work on spending it, period." (This from
one of the hardest workers I know.)
The new president, Mike Lawrie, came in from some praise from IBM folks. He
has done quite well in his current job. "And he's
the biggest Siebel booster in IBM."/p>
Several people suggested that Tom may not be the best person
to confront the daunting challenges of the next few years. "Tom
is a salesman, not a person who can clean things up and focus
on margin." But I think this view is overly simple.
Companies with strong leaders tend to organize themselves around that
leaders' strengths and weaknesses. If the leader is good, this is a good thing,
but it can't go on too long. Assumptions need to be questioned, friends whose
loyalty is greater than their ability need to be moved, behaviors that no longer work
need to be changed. By definition, the leader is not to the person to do this.
But for a new leader of Siebel, the model has to be Craig Conway, not Bob
Dutkowsky (no offense, Bob). Yes, some invigorating change is needed.
(Conway inherited a mess and fixed it, fast). But the prevailing belief at
Siebel is that the CRM market is still vastly underpenetrated and that much, much
more can be made of the tremendous assets at the company.
When Conway took over at PeopleSoft, those of us who were naysayers thought
that the tone of the company would change and that this tone was at the heart
of PeopleSoft's strength. Well, that was another mistake.
The tone did change, but it didn't matter.
Conway put intensity, leadership, marketing, and salesmanship into
that faltering company, and nobody but me missed the old tone.
With Lawrie, Siebel's tone will also change. So what.
The real question is whether
he has the wisdom to keep what is working and change what isn't. Siebel, for instance,
has the best product development and marketing organization in the business.
Does Lawrie understand why it's so good? It is by these imponderables that
the future of Siebel will be determined.
Yantra Day
Who? Yantra is a small (50-60 live customers) whose software
allows companies to track orders across multiple systems. They
held their 6th annual Yantra day last Thursday. Yantra is a stable
and profitable company where, as one friend puts it, "nobody works
too hard." It shouldn't be forgotten that such companies exist.
You use the core Yantra product when the orders that your company takes
pass through multiple, heterogeneous systems, and you still want to
keep track of them. Often, it's distribution companies
that have this problem. After they've taken an order
and before they've devliered on it, that order passes
through multiple transportation and warehousing systems, sometimes
belonging to other companies. To be able to keep up with changes
or to respond to customers' needs for visibility, it's useful to
have an "order capture" system.
Over the years, I have seen 15 or so systems that purport to
solve this problem; most are dead. I would never, ever have thought
that Yantra would be a survivor. (One version was so bad that I recommended
to a client that they ask for their money back). Again, I was mistaken.
The prototypical Yantra customer says, "Enough already with all these
systems; we need to do something." The something they decide to do involves
a corporation-wide effort, significant process change, and plenty of consulting.
Yantra doesn't need a lot of customers; the projects last a long time
and generate plenty of service revenues. The customers who did get up
and talk, among them Sysco,
the US Transportation Command, and Staples were pleased.
Two trends seem worthy of note. First, participants seemed to accept
as a given that their ERP system(s) were not going to solve this problem. For
years, a knee-jerk "Why not wait for our ERP company to build it?"
has been the single biggest
inhibitor of growth for best-in-breed companies. At all three conferences
I've been to recently, companies seemed to recognize that coexistence
was both possible and reasonable.
The second was that retail appears to be warming up. The retail
breakout at Yantra was well attended, and the interest in what
Stapes was doing (making
order-on-the-web, return-at-the-store possible) was significant. IBM now
has a new EBO (emerging business opportunity) in retail. EBOs
are fast-track areas for IBM, where significant resources are put in
so as to catch a market on the way up.
The Market for Basis Experts
According to someone who should know, " the market
for Basis programmers" is slowing down. I passed on this information
verbatim to a couple of subscribers, and that, too, was a mistake.
The programming language is ABAP; Basis is the engine that executes ABAP programs--what is now called an application server.
Netweaver is actually the latest version of Basis, one that can execute Java as well as ABAP.
What does the slowdown mean? Well, the obvious interpretation is that SAP sales are slowing. But our European Correspondent
cautions against overly simple interpretations.
"As usual, you're seeing a confluence of trends.
Yes, the number of installations is going down, and as a consequence, service
providers are consolidating. But the downtick doesn't correlate all that well
with core SAP demand. There is at least one wild card: the fact that
Indian companies should be targeting ABAP programming. Like COBOl,
ABAP is very horizontal; not much application knowledge required.
I think you'll also see a move
to outsourcing this work, particularly in 2005.
"The downtick is probably temporary.
As Netweaver takes hold, you'll see an increase in demand for
Basis dweebs with some Java. Netweaver has plenty of land mines,
so I wouldn't be surprised if the need becomes pressing. Again, though,
this has little to do with core demand for applications.
i2 Settles
I made another mistake in using such cautious and measured
language about i2's settlement of its shareholder lawsuits.
I could have been far more emphatic and looked like a genius.
Oh, well. You are what you are.
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Takes, click here for a listing.
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